1. Mauritius is one of the very few countries named after… somebody.

Indeed, as shown on this map, Mauritius is along side a very few countries in the world that has a name based on a real person. Check out the full list here.

As you all learned in class (or not), our country is named after Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, which was already the new black at that time (1533 – 1584). He was a fantastic military strategist and successfully drove the rebellion against Spain, which gave lot of pride to the Dutch people and was maybe one of the reason dutch explorers named the island after him.

We prefer to think that it was because he looked just like the map of Mauritius:

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2. We are part of the only 10 countries in the world who are at peace

We can be proud of this one! Bizin montre zot tou ki kapav viv ensam san fer enn ta ler. Full list of countries in peace here.

3. We're the 4th country in the world in consumption of opiates (heroin)

Clearly not something to be proud of. Mauritius is the FOURTH highest opiate consumer as percentage of population in the WORLD just after Afganistan, Costa Rica and Iran.

The reasons we ended up like that? Well, it’s pretty obvious. Everywhere in the world, data and facts show that war on drug is a big failure and yet Mauritius has super repressive laws on drug users. Countries like Portugal decriminalized all drugs years ago, shifting small drug possession to a public health issue rather than a criminal one and guess what? Data are proving that drug consumption is dropping steadily ever since.

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